On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Republicans tried to frame the push for Supreme Court ethics reform as a Democratic ploy. Complicating that already desperate narrative is J. Michael Luttig, the vaunted former judge who’s pushing the justices to abide by the highest ethical standards possible.
Luttig’s role is remarkable not only because he’s a respected conservative legal figure generally, but also because he helped Justice Clarence Thomas during his contentious confirmation in the early 1990s. Thomas, of course, is the impetus for the latest wave of ethical scrutiny, following ProPublica’s reporting on years of his undisclosed lavish gifts from GOP billionaire Harlan Crow.
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Luttig wrote to the Senate committee in connection with Tuesday’s hearing, at which Chief Justice John Roberts couldn’t even be bothered to show up. Striking a much different tone than Roberts, the former federal judge wrote that the court “should want, without quibble, to subject itself to the highest possible professional and ethical standards that would render the Court beyond reproach.”
On Wednesday, Luttig continued his ethics push on Twitter. He made clear his view, contrary to the position of Republican witnesses at the hearing, that Congress “indisputably” can legislate ethical standards for the justices:
The Court should not want the Congress to legislate ethical standards that would bind the Court. But the Congress indisputably has the power under the Constitution to do so. Recall that Luttig also advised then-Vice President Mike Pence that he couldn’t throw the 2020 election to Donald Trump. Clearly, the former judge sees himself as having the country’s institutional interests in mind. And though Roberts may think he’s defending his court’s interests by ignoring calls for greater accountability, he may want to consider his fellow conservative’s advice.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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